Update February 3rd: As per today's announcement, the GetDeb and PlayDeb repositories are operational again. This does not mean however that GetDeb and PlayDeb will continue as before. The maintainer shares his intention to do an online survey, and reduce the number of packages that will be available for Ubuntu 13.04 in the GetDeb and PlayDeb repositories to a manageable number. The most popular packages he is planning to integrate into the Ubuntu repositories directly, forgoing the need to add the GetDeb and PlayDeb repositories to your system. It is unclear to me what has brought about this change, as just over two weeks ago the clearly worded "I decided to discontinue GetDeb and PlayDeb" announcement left little doubt. But, good news for those that enjoy using GetDeb and PlayDeb!

GetDeb and PlayDeb were optional software portals that offered additional applications and games for you to install through the Software Manager, which you could enable on Linux Mint from the Software Sources. Today we are saddened to share the announcement from its developer that both of these software portals have been discontinued.

You may already have been experiencing errors when using Update Manager with these software portals enabled, as since early December 2012 the project's main server had failed. You would have received errors like the following:

As shared earlier here on the forums, to resolve these errors you would either disable both GetDeb and PlayDeb from the Software Sources (open Update Manager, go to Edit > Software Sources, go to Other Software tab, deselect all archive.getdeb.net sources), or you would switch to using a mirror server. You can safely do either; none of your installed applications or games will be impacted. As both software portals have been discontinued, you should be aware that the mirror servers will be static henceforth (no upgrades; no new software added) and may themselves not be available forever.

Linux Mint had included these software portals from as early as January 2008. So after 5 years we say a heartfelt goodbye and thank its developers for all the time spent on bringing more applications and games to our community's doorstep. So long, and thanks for all your work!

spynoodle wrote:So, what's next? Does anyone know of any other repositories that will serve updates to all the packages hosted by GetDeb and PlayDeb?

I've been using these repo's as long as i can remember, starting with Ubuntu. But i also found out that most software provided by Getdeb and Playdeb is common available. Whether is in the standard repositories of Ubuntu/Mint or through the website of the developers, it is still available. This is what i also found out after a while. With every application they provided the link to the software/application homepage where you also can download the latest version. Not continuing Getdeb and Playdeb isn't the end of the world. It's now more up to you finding the application you want and Google can be a great help to do this! And there's also this great forum to ask.

But anyway, you still can use the mirror sites, although i doubt that those mirror sites are maintained or supported... I think after a while you end up with old packages/versions.

spynoodle wrote:So, what's next? Does anyone know of any other repositories that will serve updates to all the packages hosted by GetDeb and PlayDeb?

I've been using these repo's as long as i can remember, starting with Ubuntu. But i also found out that most software provided by Getdeb and Playdeb is common available. Whether is in the standard repositories of Ubuntu/Mint or through the website of the developers, it is still available. This is what i also found out after a while. With every application they provided the link to the software/application homepage where you also can download the latest version. Not continuing Getdeb and Playdeb isn't the end of the world. It's now more up to you finding the application you want and Google can be a great help to do this! And there's also this great forum to ask.

But anyway, you still can use the mirror sites, although i doubt that those mirror sites are maintained or supported... I think after a while you end up with old packages/versions.

Thanks for the info. After having the update errors associated with the repository being down, I figured I might have certain packages installed from one of the repositories; however, it turns out that I might not have any to begin with, so it probably won't really be much of a problem to me.